Beta Band – Won

I have been to two MLB playoff games in my life, both at Dodger Stadium. The first was in the fall of 2006 when, after losing twice to the Mets in New York, the Dodgers came home to finish getting swept in the N.L. Division Series. Being a lifelong Mets fan, I felt my life was slightly in danger that evening. Luckily there was a good turnout of other ex-pat New Yorkers showing up in support of their team. Unfortunately, that was as far as the Mets would get in 2006 (or any year since).

The second playoff game was this past Thursday, when the defending champ Phillies came to town for Game 1 of the NLCS. What should have been a low-scoring affair (Hamels v. Kershaw) turned into a sloppy, poorly pitched outing in which the Phils were somehow able to convert all of their 8 hits into runs, while my “adopted” Dodgers could only score six runs with fourteen hits!

Speaking of adoption, I’ve been getting some grief at work for all-of-a-sudden pulling for the Dodgers. Some folks apparently feel that sports adoption is completely unacceptable. Yet, for those of us who root for teams that eliminate themselves from competition in mid-July, it’s a completely acceptable way to continue on rooting for the great game of baseball. Make no mistake, whenever the Mets play the Dodgers, I cheer full-heartedly for the Mets (even in the inebriated upper-deck, across 20 rows of hecklers). Oh yes. But once their season has ended, I root for the hometown team (and NO, the “Los Angeles Angels” are not the hometown team").

But until April, when the Mets begin their long and solid march towards October of 2010, and hoist their WS trophy above the heads of the crowds celebrating in the parade on 5th Avenue, it’s “Go Blue”!

Wow. Life is full.
Just today:

• Two of my 8th grade girls served the first day of their suspension for throwing some punches at each other (with mild success) just 10 minutes before school ended yesterday. I feel like I need one of those signs you see at industrial plants, only with this one reading “Days Since a Fight:”, which, while previously staggering in the hundreds, yesterday dropped back down to zero.
• I had three, yes three separate people remark to me how pathetic my NY Mets are starting the year. A record of 2-4 with their Home Opener loss to the Phillies (c’mon! The Phillies !?!?!) today has put me in a quite dire mood when it comes to the joyfulness that typically accompanies the wonders of baseball in the springtime.
• My childhood hatred of NPR is demonstrating to me the irony of life. Listening to KCRW (a local NPR affiliate) on the way home this evening, they announced that they’d be giving away copies of the newly released DVD of P.T. Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. Surprisingly, I was one of the first five callers (yea for speed-dial), and won! Any of my readers who live in Los Angeles (including Whitter, La Mirada, La Habra, or any of those other wanna-be L.A. suburbs) are now officially invited over to my place to watch it once it arrives (which I approximate will be sometime early next decade).
• Finally, much to my great dismay, one of my favorite places to hear live music, Largo, will be moving from it’s intimate 50-seat cavern to a monstrous 250-seat theatre, albeit a mere 3 miles away. While initially dismayed, I had hoped that the new venue’s neighborhood would at least permeate with the same authenticity as the current Fairfax location. However, today driving through West Hollywood, I pass a sign that says “Coronet Theatre: Largo Coming Soon.” Sadness. :(  In the meantime, enjoy some of my favorite artists who regularly perform there!

Jon Brion – I Was Happy (be patient, because he’s got to play all the instruments)

Aimee Mann – Save Me

Badly Drawn Boy – A Minor Incident

One of my quirks as a teacher is to present my kids with a “good news-bad news” scenario. I have yet to figure out why they inevitably want to hear the bad news first. Regardless, I’ve been finding out very recently of some good news – bad news scenarios of my own!!!

1. Good News: Reading the newspaper comics used to be one of my favorite hobbies growing up. Bad News: The comics today are, suffice it to say, no longer funny. Good News: A friend alerted me to Garfield minus Garfield, in which Garfield is removed from famous Garfield strips, resulting in “an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life”. Good News: Dark, disturbing, and deeply hilarious.

2: Bad News: The Mets choked last October. Worse News: Being a very vocal Mets’ fan had it’s share of consequences in the days immediately following. Good News: In the off-season, the Mets signed ace Johan Santana, to all but shore up the division.. Better News: The trash talking between myself and my Braves-loving, Cards-loving, Giants-loving, Red Sox-loving, and Yankees-loving friends has officially commenced. Bring it on! Best News: Spring Training has officially begun, ushering in a new season of baseball and a new season of spring! My favorite season!

3. Good News: I called Gateway and they have successfully finished fixing my laptop. Better News: They actually fixed it free of charge. Bad News: Upon shipping it back to me, their carrier, DHL, lost my computer…yes, that’s right, THEY LOST MY COMPUTER!!! Good News: Gateway will be sending me a brand new one. Better News: The monthly data backups I’ve been doing for the past two years have actually paid off!

The moral of this story? Laugh deeply, enjoy the outdoors, and BACK UP YOUR FILES!!!

What a great night! Finally, after 16 long years of frustration, my favorite football team, the New York Giants have prevailed as SuperBowl Champions!

Not only did my team win, but the night was amazing due to the fact that I got to witness what I consider the second greatest football game ever!!!

It’s been a long sixteen years since the Giants last won it all in 1991. I still can recall being 10 years old and watching that game, caring more about the Hare Jordan commercials than the game itself.

Now if only this level of success can become inter-athletic, especially come this October.

If I was Rite-Aid, I’d be a little concerned right about now. Although I can imagine that pharmaceutical sales would possibly run at a yearly high during this often stressful time of the season, a surprising new competitor in the medicinal disseminating world has suddenly surfaced on the horizon. Luckily, there are only about 30 nation-wide.

I’m sick. I’m not exactly sure what it is, but I do know that it came swiftly last night, and yet somehow I was foolhardy enough to go into school today. Bad idea. 2nd Period was really tough (today was an “even” day with only periods 2, 4, and 6)…my body ached, my focus was lost, and my energy was nowhere in sight (this was a stark difference from my usual classroom antics which sometimes include flailing my arms wildly around while teaching about inequalities). Even though I told my kids that if I looked a bit pale, it’s not just because I’m white, but because I’m under the weather. Anyway, 2nd period came and went and I’m less than convinced that the kids learned what I had hoped.

Anyway, luckily 4th period is my conference period, which is the one period I don’t have a class. I was able to lay out on a nice long couch in the teachers’ lounge and grab a few winks. I was able to do this, but unfortunately, this did little to avail things. By the beginning of lunch (which I skipped) I was seriously contemplating leaving school early and going home. However, I didn’t feel like finding two other teachers to cover a 108 minute class. And for some reason, I had a feeling that my 6th period students would persevere despite their teacher being a walking zombie.

The make an already long story slightly shorter, my 6th period kids came in and I was seated (something I never do) at the front of the class with my PC projected on the screen as well as a wireless mouse, a keyboard, and a bell. For the next 108 minutes, the students did an amazing job of learning the lesson (solving inequalities), working individually, and working in partners as I did not speak a single word out loud for the entire class period. Most of them thought it was fairly interesting to see how a teacher could communicate with them silently for so long, and I was grateful to my kids, for I found myself feeling slightly better by the end of the class period.

Anyway, that’s all for me for now…I’m headed to bed early tonight to recoup and hopefully get back on track with things tomorrow!

P.S. In the meantime, I don’t really know how to feel about Los Angeles’ new acquisition. Joe Torre, the former Yankee manager is coming to the helm with the Dodgers for the next three years. Now if only ownership would put some of that money towards actual talent on the field, the Dodgers might actually get somewhere.

P.P.S. For those of you who are either math geeks, science geeks, or music geeks, the following is a fairly interesting video. Apparently, someone with way too much time on their hands actually wired two Tesla coils to play at different frequencies and in synchronization. The result is an almost baroque-ish in nature rendition of an otherwise very romantic piece!

This weekend was fairly relaxing. Fall is in full swing, and after a Friday afternoon that included an extra 1-hour practice test session with my 6th period class, I was ready to enjoy the weekend. Luckily for me, that meant getting up at 7am Saturday morning for the only thing worth getting up that early for…a round of golf. My friend from Mosaic, Eric, and I met up for a short round on a quick par-3 course. What was even more enjoyable than hitting some decent 9-iron shots, hitting some decent putts, and completely duffing some off-the-tee shots, was hearing from Eric about his recent trip with a Mosaic team to Bali to work alongside some cross-cultural workers over there.

Later on in the day, I got to hang out (for the first time, really) with one of my two new roommates, Zack. We went up to Hollywood and enjoyed Wes Anderson’s new film, The Darjeeling Limited. Since the 8:20 show was sold out, we had some time to kill before the 10:30 show and so we walked around a bit, checked out Amoeba Music, and then hopped on a bus, that took us a bit further down Sunset Blvd. Overall, very fun evening.

At this point, it might be helpful to clarify the pictures that you see posted with this blog. Prior to hanging out with Zack Saturday night, I got a call from my friend and colleague Raul, who said, “Are you gonna be home in about an hour? I have something for you.” An hour later, Raul arrives, and no sooner does he walk in the door than he throws me this black t-shirt with the some very familiar orange and blue markings on it. Yes it is the shirt in the picture. Yes, it does reflect the season-ending misery that the Mets endured as they probably completed the greatest single-handed choking in all of sports. Yes, it does have a picture of Mr. Met drowning in sorrows, with an injured-baseball head. Yes, he is wearing a uniform that says “Mess” in an all-too familiar font. And yes, the title of this shirt is “You Gotta Bereave“. And yes, here I am, wearing it! The fun never ends.

So this Saturday was a pretty busy day here in Los Angeles. Having felt much better after a 13 hour-night sleep (yes, I went to bed at 8:30 on Friday night), I got up, headed out to Starbucks for my morning brew. In the afternoon, my friend Rustum and I braved the MTA bus line (line 28 runs 2 blocks from my house) to downtown to the 2nd annual L.A. Weekly Detour Music Festival. For those of you who may not know, L.A. Weekly is a free weekly paper that lets all of us Angelenos know what is going on each week in regards to art shows, music concerts, film, food, etc. Detour is an (at this point) annual live music concert they sponsor in which they shut down the four streets surrounding City Hall, set up four stages, and invite new and upcoming musicians to play 30-40 minute sets. Going in to the event, I had heard of 0 of the 20 bands that were scheduled to perform (that’s 0% for those of you counting at home). Anyway, the whole event was alot of fun, the highlight being a group called the Teddy Bears, who came on stage in suits and giant Teddy Bear heads. Despite the ridiculous attire, the music was great!

Finally, in other much sadder news, there is now no longer any reason to continue to watch baseball given the fact that the National League will be represented by either the D’Backs or the Rockies. I guess football season has officially begun.

Wow. I don’t know about any of you, but this week so far has been especially exhausting. The trouble is that it’s only Wednesday and my schedule doesn’t seem to be getting any easier. So just to be fair, it seems appropriate to give a little background on why I might be so tired. The following is a list of just several factors that mildly to moderately contribute to the fact that I’m so tired.

1. I’ve had to endure the taunting of colleagues who somehow expect me to explain the utter deterioration of the New York Mets in the final weeks of the season.

2. I’m recovering from being sick. It seems that the cold-bug has hit Cochran Middle School quite hard. Nothing big enough to warrant a sick day, but just big enough to be annoying!

3. Scheduling a field trip to USC (we’re going on the 10th) is daunting in and of itself, but making sure that the right forms and waivers are filled out is something quite different entirely.

4. I’ve recently been deliberately trying to enjoy some early mornings at the local Starbucks at the bottom of my road. I’ve found a great way to spend the early morning (Starbucks opens at 6am) while enjoying my daily fix of caffeine, listening to John Adams, and reading some Scripture (although currently plowing through the book of Numbers can be particularly dry at times).

5. My second of two new roommates (Mitch is staying) this year just moved in this week. Zack is currently working in theatre, which has nothing to do with why I’m tired but the fact that he brought his copy of Season 3 of “The Office” (which we watched several episodes of last night) is contributing to the fact of why I’m particularly tired today.

6. Also to blame is the latest book I have been enjoying. Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson is a novel of an Iowan family as told through the letters of an elderly father to his young son. While definitely a slow read, it is the perfect nighttime activity as I wind down my day, Unfortunately, I find myself winding down the day much later than I probably should.

Well, that’s about it. Tonight I have “band practice”, which currently consists of myself, two of my roommates, Mitch (on drums) and Matt (on bass) and one of Matt’s friends on guitar. We’re definitely still got a long ways to go ’til we sell out the Staples Center, but it’s just fun to play music once again. So, signing off, hopefully into a more restful environment, I bid all of you adieu for the evening!

In memoriam of the season that “once was”, also known as the season that “should have been”, I have changed my desktop wallpaper to accurately reflect my state of mind and soul that I currently find myself in. “The horror, the horror…”